Carrie Fisher, Patron Saint of Screwups

The whole flight down to South Florida, my heart felt like a black hole.

I was aware of it pulsating in my chest, between the caverns of my chest. I remember the flight attendant poured me a Seagrams ginger ale over ice and that the Hershey bar I coveted was at arm’s length from me in the vacant seat between my father and I, but I refused to eat it. I was hungover with a crippling migraine and the worst hangxiety of my life.

And that black hole just keep simmering in the caverns of my chest.

We eventually landed and the anxiety somewhat subsided. The cocktail of medications and the valium drip helped. I felt like a newborn, my eyes bleary and wide.

I turned to Carrie Fisher as a sort of patron saint while imbibing ginger ale, white cheddar popcorn, and vanilla pudding. I even earned that nickname for a while.

“Hey!” they’d say, seeing me coming to light my American Spirit, “there’s Carrie Fisher!”

I always kept Postcards from the Edge tucked beneath my wing, using my airplane ticket as a bookmark. I would re-read the same passages over again, marking them with an electric melon gel pen from Japan, as a sort of prayer. I memorized them like decades in holy electric pink rosary beads.

And wouldn’t you know it worked? Because the more I prayed to St. Carrie Fisher, the more I felt a new self be born.